November 22, 2005

Each year, the twenty-second of November quietly sneaks in behind the twentieth and the twenty-first. I never think of the twenty-second until it rolls around, but once it’s here, I cannot forget what it was like on that day.

I was a sophomore, I think, getting dressed for gym class when they made the same sequence of announcements on the PA. I just remember everybody just stayed at the same point of dress or undress. Everybody was stunned and quiet accept for John (can’t remember his last name), an Irish Catholic kid who wanted to fight somebody, anybody.